Bidding adieu to the Del Taco cashier.
Nobody loves Del Taco more than me. If that were possible I would have seen you there. And since I never saw you, or you never had the courtesy to introduce yourself, it is safe to assume that my claim is true.
But that is not why I am writing this entry. It’s with a heavy heart that I pen these words, okay, type these words. I’ll weigh my heart later to prove that it is, in fact, heavy.
Why the heavy heart you ask?
Well, I have come to consider the plight of the Del Taco cashiers. They’re friendly enough people, except the guy at the the Del Taco in Pasadena who told me how to properly word my order… one thing led to another… and we almost had to step outside. Not really, but that’s because he weighed 80 lbs soaking wet.
I wasn’t going to hurt him… maybe give him a noogie or something. You know, make him say “Uncle” or “Taco Bell rocks!”
I digress…
Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. It wasn’t that long ago that when you pulled into a gas station someone was wiping your windows and another guy was pumping your gas. These days that kind of service only exists in Oregon where the government requires you by force of law to submit to the tyranny of the majority (mainly females who hate to get out of the car and pump gas).
But consider the Del Taco cashier for just a minute. Yes, that means you need to stop thinking about the next pair of shoes you’re going to buy, or what might go with the blouse you purchased last week, or whether Ken or Blaine is attracted to you. You need to put that on hold for a second. 
These hard working people stand in front of a register all day long. Back in the day the registers were pretty simple. Their function was very basic. The drawer held the money and the cashier had to do the math in their head. Calculators were eventually inserted into the cash register and the math was handled automatically. Except in parts of West Virginia where things move at a slower pace.
McDonalds came along and revolutionized everything a few years back. Rather than train employees how to do complicated tasks like punching in $4.97 they came up with the novel idea of creating pictures that corresponded to their combo meals.
This worked out great for the cashiers whose brains were getting tired with all of that heavy math. Now all they had to do was look for the picture that coordinated with the order. How do I know this?
I had to reach around and key my order in once when a new employee was not sure how the register quite worked.
So why am I bidding adieu to the Del Taco cashiers?
Well, the next step is basically what I just mentioned. Flip the register around and let me simply press the button with the picture of the combo meal I’m ordering. I already swipe my own credit card at some stores.
Simply flipping around the register will eliminate 2-4 jobs from every fast food restaurant per shift. How many fast food restaurants are there?
Many thousands.
So what are those people going to do? Well, those people who are trained on the old registers will have some of the basic math skills that will come in handy as they learn the electronics that will be required to remain relevant in the fast food joint of the future.
The guy who repairs the registers will have a job… but he or she can probably service 30-50 stores.
And when they automate food preparation we’ll be down to 1-2 employees per store. I guesss what I am trying to say to all my of Del Taco friends is: start planning for the future.
Because the future isn’t going to have many manual labor jobs.